#vpn

Censorship and new laws block online information and stifle digital life The Russian internet is becoming less free, more isolated from the rest of the world, and on a path resembling countries with strictly controlled online spaces like in Iran. A recent report by a leading digital rights group in Russia paints a bleak picture of state censorship of the country’s internet. The research, published by Roskomsvoboda, a Moscow-based group that advocates for internet freedom and the protection (...)

Cybercriminals are exploiting fears and chaos caused by coronavirus, says security firm Hackers have launched a wave of cyber-attacks trying to exploit British people working from home, as the coronavirus lockdown forces people to use often unfamiliar computer systems. The proportion of attacks targeting home workers increased from 12% of malicious email traffic before the UK’s lockdown began in March to more than 60% six weeks later, according to to data from cybersecurity company (...)

Online privacy is not dead, but you have to be angry enough to demand it. Go, go gadgets has long been the attitude in my house. Perhaps yours, too : A smartphone made it easier to stay in touch. A smart TV streamed a zillion more shows. A smart speaker let you talk to a smart thermostat without getting out of bed. That’s progress, right ? Now I’ve got a new attitude : It’s not just what I can get out of technology — I want to know what the technology gets out of me. For the past year, I’ve (...)

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers this week worked overtime to vilify encryption, oblivious to the fact that weakening encryption standards will put the public, and the internet, at risk. Even the Defense Department is now pointing out that the government’s quest to weaken encryption lies somewhere between counterproductive and downright harmful. Attorney General Bill Barr and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham have been on a tear lately in a bid to undermine encryption (...)

It looks like Facebook was not the only one abusing Apple’s system for distributing employee-only apps to sidestep the App Store and collect extensive data on users. Google has been running an app called Screenwise Meter, which bears a strong resemblance to the app distributed by Facebook Research that has now been barred by Apple, TechCrunch has learned. In its app, Google invites users aged 18 and up (or 13 if part of a family group) to download the app by way of a special code and (...)

A new website exposes the extent to which Apple cooperates with Chinese government internet censorship, blocking access to Western news sources, information about human rights and religious freedoms, and privacy-enhancing apps that would circumvent the country’s pervasive online surveillance regime. The new site, AppleCensorship.com, allows users to check which apps are not accessible to people in China through Apple’s app store, indicating those that have been banned. It was created by (...)

Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August. Facebook sidesteps the App Store and rewards teenagers and adults to download the Research app and give it root access to network traffic in what may be a violation of Apple policy so the social network can decrypt and analyze their phone activity, a TechCrunch investigation confirms.

Domain-fronting is now a thing of the past App developers won’t be able to use Google to get around internet censorship anymore. The Google App Engine is discontinuing a practice called domain-fronting, which let services use Google’s network to get around state-level internet blocks. A recent change in Google’s network architecture means the trick no longer works. First spotted by Tor developers on April 13th, the change has been rolling out across Google services and threatens to disrupt (...)

As part of an internet ‘cleanup’, Wu Xiangyang was also fined an amount equal to his profits since starting service in 2013 A man in China has been sentenced to five and a half years in jail for selling software that circumvented the country’s pervasive internet censorship controls, a sign authorities are stepping up a campaign meant to “clean up” the internet. Wu Xiangyang was also fined 500,000 yuan (£56,800), an amount equal to his profits since starting the service in 2013, according to a (...)